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International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences
The formation of the Christian canon was not a one day venture. Some scholars maintain it spanned from the first up to about the fourth centuries. This paper has three main parts: the first draws a linear process of canon generation, beginning from text to scripture and possibly becoming canonical. The second focuses on the creation of the Christian canon by exploring the stages and the implications of naming the canon as `Testaments`. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the use and inclusion or exclusion of the Jewish scripture by Christians as discussed by a heretic (Marcion) and three Anti-heretics (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) in the 2 and/or 3 centuries of the Roman Empire. The third part takes an example of a modern church (Church of Christ) whose reception to the Old Testament is one of skepticism. Furthermore, the level of usage of the Old Testament by the Church of Christ is key for the thesis of this paper. It is, therefore, important to assess a pos.
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The question of the word “canon,” how the Christian Bible came to be, and what meaning, if any, that formation has any of the individual texts in the Bible, is a complicated and intensive question. It is clear that investigations into the canonical formation of the second century need a broader understanding of how texts were both understood to be authoritative or used in an authoritative way. Also, the formation of the Christian canon should not be simply understood through the lenses of either the formation of the Jewish Scriptures or the influence of heretical canonical collections. The story of the formation of the Christian Bible had many influences, and these influences also formed the way the Christian Bible was used and understood by the Church.
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